FPS Apoc­a­lyp­tic Co-op Sur­vival

What bet­ter way to bond with your friends than to bar­ri­cade a room from zom­bies on a cold, bar­ren night? Or to make your last stand armed with only a rusty axe and fry­ing pan you looted from an aban­doned house you barely es­caped alive just min­utes ago? Pop­u­lar­ized by Trip­wire In­ter­ac­tive’s Killing Floor in 2005 (as a mod for Un­real Tour­na­ment 2004) and briefly re-in­tro­duced in Call of Duty: World at War’s ‘Nazi Zom­bie’ mode in 2008, it was not un­til Valve’s own Left 4 Dead se­ries in the same year that the game type so­lid­i­fied it­self as a stand­alone genre, rather than a mere game mode or mod.

The en­su­ing ac­claim from fans world­wide re­sulted in the birth of Deep Sil­ver’s Dead Is­land se­ries in 2011, Re­bel­lion De­vel­op­ment’s

Nazi Zom­bie Army se­ries since 2013, Warner Brothers’ hugely pop­u­lar Dy­ing Light early this year, and Killing Floor 2. Fo­cus­ing on sur­viv­ing with friends or strangers alike, the key el­e­ment in the genre’s ap­peal is its abil­ity to de­liver a thrilling, adrenalinelaced, co­op­er­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ence in hos­tile en­vi­ron­ments, re­quir­ing a com­bi­na­tion of cun­ning, stealth, and team­work in or­der to emerge vic­to­ri­ous.